[OpenFontLibrary] Recent non-font content on OFLB

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 07:29:30PM +0200, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:14:36AM -0600, Barry Schwartz wrote:
> > Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> skribis:
> > > On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 10:29:00AM +0100, Nicolas Spalinger wrote:
> > > > Dave? Ben? Jon? What about the new site?
> > > 
> > > I'm holding my breath for a functional GNU hurd on which I'll run LaTeX3
> > > using final STIX fonts downloaded from the new OFLB website.
> > 
> > If I may interject as a font developer and font user.
> > 
> > There's a serious issue buried in there, which is that free fonts do
> > not have font-functional free software on which to run, and it keeps
> > on being like that. I am developing for TeXies (whose software is
> > _mostly_ functional) and for the users of what some call slaveware. I
> > have to write my own software to test and use my own Latin-script
> > fonts.
> > 
> > OFLB really ought to be able to provide software bundles, I think,
> > with font collections bundled with software that actually works, in
> > which one can actually access the fonts in an Adobe Opticals
> > collection and actually get the fonts asked for, in which OpenType
> > tags can be selected, and so on. Starter kits. That's how ordinary
> > people get drawn into the font world. That's part of how to make OFLB
> > and the bundled-software projects very, very popular. But the fonts
> > actually have to work in the software.
> 
> I think I forgot to add harfbuzz-ng to the list.

A more serious reply.

I can't but agree with you on the chronic deficiency of good,
typographically aware free software, apart from the 30 years old TeX,
in fact the only way to utilize goodies of OpenType fonts is by using
some variant of TeX (LuaTeX is my preferred). The free "DTP" application
can't even do simple things like standard ligatures!

But how OFLB is going to fix this, I don't think you are suggesting that
we (OFLB community, whatever it means) rewrite most of free software
text layout stack (and funny "DTP" applications) to support advanced
typography. So, I think you mean writing smaller applications that are
are able to really utilize our free fonts, but I then fail to see what
is the use of such applications if can fit in a larger ecosystem and
work flow?

I, myself, gave up and switched to TeX world, though weired and archaic
it seems, they at least have some clue on what good typography is.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer